I was trying to purchase a mat from the laura ashley website - £140 in the sale. When I went to the checkout to buy the mat a message appeared saying that the selling price for the mat had increased from £140.00 to £250.00 the price before the sale. However, the website was showing the discounted price of £140. I contacted customer services and was informed that the end of season sale ended yesterday and they were in the process of updating the website and the mat was now back to £250. Can they do this? Do I have any rights?

Unfortunately I don't think you can do anything about this.

They told you before a sales contract was made that the price was something else. At this point you had the choice to not go through with it. Some stores may honour their own misprints, but there is no legal obligation to do it.

Hi --- If something is wrongly marked with a lower price, you cannot insist on buying it at that price. When a retailer displays a product for sale, legally it is giving you 'an invitation to treat', which means it is inviting you to make an offer to buy.

The retailer can refuse that offer if it decides that it doesn't want to sell you the goods, to have a legally-binding contract the retailer must have accepted your offer to buy.

The law says that a retailer can refuse to sell anything to you, at any price, without giving a reason. But if a retailer sells you something at too low a price by mistake, they can’t later make you pay the extra, unless they can show you knew the price was wrong.

Under the Consumer Protection Act 1987, it is illegal to give misleading price information about goods and services, however their innocent explanation in this case that the offer had just finished and they were in the process of updating their prices, would suffice.